Notes on Ch.2 Parent, Adult, and Child

Cultural observation has supported the assumption that three states exist in all people.

Berne has given them the names, Parent, Adult and Child. Berne states that three concepts are psychological realities, phenomenological realities. These three states are produced by the playback of recorded data of events in the past, involving real people, real times, real places, real decisions, and real feelings.

Parent

Parent is a huge collection of recording in the brain of unquestioned or imposed external events perceived by a person in his early years. This can happen up to five years of life. Parent data or recording comes from more sources than physical parents alone. A three-year old watching television shows records what she or he sees. Parent data is full of taught concepts in life.

Child

The responses of the little person to what he sees and hears are recorded in the brain of the people and these are associated with child concept of state. It is the feeling and understanding that a person develops by seeing and hearing various events. Especially the feelings that come when a person is helpless is part of Child state recordings. When a person is in the grip of feelings, we say his child has taken over.

The feelings that a child get are positive as well as negative. There are feelings related to creativity, curiosity, desire to explore and know, the urge to touch and feel, the pleasure of discovering new things and experiences.

Do the recordings of parent and child states continue indefinitely? Do they stop at around age five? Almost all the possible situations in life are encountered by the time five years age is reached and any further recoding will be only reinforcement by further experience or by expression of the state. The author refers Aristotle and says expression, leads to further impression.

The Adult

At around 10 months, the child starts moving on his own. The mobility allows and starts giving an opportunity for the infant to put into practice his feeling of touching an object. He develops a freedom of choice. The adult state is recording based on experience. It not taught concept, it is not felt concept to what is seen and heard but it is concept based on experience. The adult state recordings are the result of data processing that comes from recordings in the three states - Parent, Child and Adult.

Probability estimating is also part of Adult state activity.

Another point made in the chapter is that creativity requires computer time of the brain.